Reclaiming History

by Vincent Bugliosi

  Rimma’s boss told her that Oswald would have to request citizenship from the Supreme Soviet, and Oswald mailed such a letter, written with Rimma’s help,* that same day, October 16:

  To the USSR Supreme Soviet, 16th October 1959:

  I, Lee Harvey Oswald, am asking to be granted citizenship of The Soviet Union. My visa is valid from 15th of October and expires on 21st of October. My citizenship should be granted before this date. In the mean time I am waiting for your decision about my citizenship. Currently I am a citizen of the United States of America. I want citizenship because I am a Communist and working class person. I have lived in a decadent capitalist society, where the workers are slaves. I am 20, I served in US marines for three years, I served in the occupation forces in Japan. I have seen American militarism in all its forms. I do not want to return to any other country outside of the Soviet Union’s borders. I wish to reject my American citizenship and accept the responsibility of a Soviet citizen…I do not have enough money to live here indefinitely or to return to any other country…I am asking you to consider my request as soon as possible.

  Sincerely yours,

  Lee Harvey Oswald455

  Although Oswald had no idea of what was happening, the Soviet authorities reacted quickly. The Fifteenth Department of the First Chief Directorate of the KGB memorialized Oswald’s status in a “Report on the Stay in Moscow of American Citizen Lee Harvey Oswald,” which clearly drew on what Rimma was reporting to her superiors at Intourist, since it includes a paragraph reading, “Oswald showed absolutely no interest in sightseeing, but was completely consumed by the thought of staying in the Soviet Union.”456

  Oswald, along with everyone he was bringing into his orbit, was obviously on the fast track. On October 17, just one day after he arrived in Moscow, Oswald’s letter, accompanied by a cover letter marked “urgent,” was forwarded from the Chancellory of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet to the KGB deputy chairman, Aleksandr Perepelitsyn. An attachment suggested a review of Oswald’s request by the First and Second Directorates of the KGB—the organs responsible, respectively, for intelligence and counterintelligence in the Soviet Union. That same day the Registry and Archives Department of the KGB opened a spetsproverka, a “control file,” on Oswald and he was given the code name Nalim, meaning “turbot” or “river fish.”457

  In Oswald’s diary he records that Rimma’s attitude changed the next day when they again went sightseeing. He noted that she was politely sympathetic but uneasy. He thought Rimma felt sorry for him and had tried to be a friend because he was “someth. new.” On his twentieth birthday, October 18, two days after he arrived in Russia, she gave him a copy of Dostoevsky’s novel The Idiot,458 in which she had written, “Dear Lee, Great congratulations! Let all your dreams come true! 18 X 1959 Moscow Yours Rimma.” The book, FBI item number 291, was found among his effects after the assassination.459

  As they waited for word about Lee’s request for residence and citizenship, they continued their sightseeing, attending an exhibition and visiting Lenin’s tomb. There were moments when she sensed that Lee wanted to kiss her, but although they were getting closer, she had a boyfriend she saw once a week, a young engineer who recently graduated from the Moscow Power Institute. Besides, if she let Lee kiss her and it somehow got back to her superiors, she knew she could lose her job. When these moments occurred, Rimma would dispel them by patting Lee on his hand.460 Meanwhile, Oswald counted the rapidly dwindling days left on his visa.461

  On October 19, Oswald was interviewed in his hotel room by a man named Lev Setyaev, who told Lee he was a reporter for Radio Moscow seeking statements from American tourists about their impressions of Moscow,462 but who was probably also acting for the KGB.463 According to author John Newman, Setyaev was also known to the CIA and the FBI, but Newman was unable to ascertain in what context.464 In 1991, Setyaev was located and interviewed by journalist Peter Wronski. Setyaev said he tape-recorded his interview of Oswald but erased it immediately because Oswald’s remarks were too political for the light tourist chatter that he needed for his show.465 Two years later, Oswald told officials at the American embassy that the interview had lasted no more than three minutes and he had said nothing of political significance. It may well have been, however, an attempt by the KGB to evaluate Oswald’s sincerity or to provoke compromising statements from him. If the interview was ever broadcast, the American embassy and the Associated Press, which monitored Radio Moscow, remained unaware of it.466 Setyaev may also have taken a photograph of Oswald in his hotel room,467 which is a rather odd thing for a radio interviewer to do—less odd for a KGB agent.

  Most everyone Oswald met in the Soviet Union was at least a KGB informant if not an outright agent. The Committee for State Security, or KGB, was a lineal descendant of the Cheka, the security force established by Lenin in 1917 to protect his Bolshevik Revolution against counterrevolutionary elements.468 In addition to its foreign intelligence and counterintelligence operations, in which it resembled the American CIA, the KGB was responsible for the internal security of the Soviet state and the safety of its leaders.469 A section in the Seventh Department of the Second Chief Directorate of the KGB was responsible for the surveillance of all American tourists, and it expected, and got, full cooperation of all Intourist guides, hotel concierges and porters, and anyone else who might come in contact with a tourist like Lee Oswald.470

  On October 20, Oswald wrote in his diary that Rimma was able to tell him that the “pass. and visa dept.” wanted to see him. “I am excited greatly by this news,” he wrote.471 The next morning, October 21, he was interviewed by an official concerning his application for citizenship. The official, Oswald wrote in his diary, “Balding stout, black suit fairly good English, askes what do I want?, I say Sovite citizenship, he ask why I give vauge answers about ‘Great Soviet Union’ He tells me ‘USSR only great in Literature wants me to go back home.’” Lee is “stunned” and reiterates his desire but gets no encouragement. The official tells him only that he will check to see if the visa can be extended. Oswald returned downcast to the Hotel Berlin.472

  His interlocutor, Abram Shaknazarov, was in fact a KGB official who had worked in the organs of State Security since the late 1920s. He spoke several languages, including English, and the interview, although Oswald seems not to have realized it, was essentially a KGB debriefing. Shaknazarov was not impressed with Oswald. Even if Oswald had offered classified information in a bid for special favors, it’s doubtful that the KGB would have been ready to rely on information from such a clearly disturbed youth. Oswald was distinctly unappetizing small fry, and even to use him as a propaganda device would be ill-advised during this period of warming U.S.-Soviet relations.473

  That same day, the heads of both the First and Second Chief Directorates wrote to the KGB’s Registry and Archives Department, which was maintaining Oswald’s control file and stated that they had no interest in “American Citizen Oswald,” and that “it was not advisable to grant him Soviet citizenship.”474 The quickness of the reply can only be interpreted to mean one thing: they were so certain they would never have any interest in Oswald that there wasn’t even any need to sleep on it, not even for one night.*

  Later in the morning of October 21, the Passport Office ordered his ticket for the train back to Helsinki and sent him a message at his hotel to report to the Passport Office at three o’clock. He must leave Moscow by eight that evening.475

  “I am shocked!! My dreams!” Oswald exclaimed in his diary entry of October 21. “I retire to my room. I have $100. left. I have waited for 2 year to be accepted. My fondes dreams are shattered because of a petty offial; because of bad planning I planned to much!” In a passage clearly meant to be affecting, Oswald describes his next moves: “7:00 P.M. I decide to end it. Soak rist in cold water to numb the pain. Than slash my left wrist. Than plaug wrist into bathtub of hot water. I think ‘when Rimma comes at 8. to find me dead it will be a great shock. somewhere, a violin plays, as I wacth my life w
hirl away. I think to myself. ‘how easy to die’ and ‘a sweet death, (to violins) about 8:00 Rimma finds [me] unconscious (bathtub water a rich red color) she screams (I remember that) and runs for help.”476

  As stated earlier in the text, not all of Oswald’s diary entries appear to have been made on the day of the event to which they related, and this invited errors. Almost assuredly, his October 21, 1959, entry that at 6:00 p.m. he received word that he had to leave the country that night at 8:00 p.m.477 is an error. On its face, most likely the Passport Office would not be open at 6:00 p.m. And even if it were, it’s highly unlikely they’d call him at 6:00 p.m. and tell him he had to leave the country two hours later. There’d be no reason for them not to give him a few more hours’ notice. More conclusively, the Moscow hospital records show that Oswald was admitted, unconscious, at 4:00 p.m. on October 21, 1959,478 which would have been two hours before, according to Oswald, he received notice he had to leave the country. And Rimma told author Norman Mailer that when Oswald did not appear outside the Hotel Berlin by 2:30 p.m., she went to his room with her associate from Intourist to knock on his door. He was discovered inside his room in his bathtub shortly thereafter.479 Just as Oswald’s diary entry of 6:00 p.m. was in error, his entry for the same day, October 21, that he tried to commit suicide at “7:00 p.m.” and was discovered in his room “about 8” has to correspondingly be in error.

  According to KGB files,

  On October 21, a phone call was placed from OVIR [Passport Office] to the Hotel Berlin with a message for Oswald and his translator [Rimma] to appear at OVIR at around three o’clock in the afternoon. OVIR wanted to know if tickets for Oswald’s departure had been purchased and, learning that they had not, suggested that they be ordered immediately, since the time of his stay in the country had expired. To the question of whether it made sense to extend his tour for one to two days, the reply was negative. At twelve o’clock noon the hotel informed Oswald, in the presence of his translator, that he must be at OVIR at three o’clock and that train tickets to Helsinki had been ordered for him. Oswald said that he would come down at 2:45 and went back to his room. When he did not appear at the appointed time, the translator became worried and went to his room. The door was locked from the inside, and no one responded to the sound of knocking. When the door was opened with an emergency passkey, Oswald was discovered lying in his bathtub unconscious and with a cut vein on his left arm. Before opening his vein, he had written a note of the following content: “I have made such a long journey to find death, but I love life.”480*

  Rimma rode with Oswald to the Botkin Hospital in Moscow—one with a special section for diplomats and foreigners—and saw him taken into a locked mental ward.481

  The evidence as to whether this was a serious suicide attempt on Oswald’s part is not clear. The doctor who treated Oswald’s wound when he first arrived at Botkin (she did not want her name to be given) told author Norman Mailer thirty years later that the wound was hardly more than a scratch, it never reached his vein, and he wouldn’t have been kept in the hospital had he been an ordinary Russian patient.482 Author Jean Davison makes the point well for the proposition that it was not a suicide attempt. She writes, “There’s reason to believe that this incident was another one of Oswald’s dramatic manipulations. He knew Rimma was scheduled to arrive at his hotel room within the hour and would find him. The hospital records, provided by the Soviets after the assassination, state that his injury was ‘light’ and that Oswald told his doctor he had cut his wrist to ‘postpone his departure’ from the Soviet Union. In fact, this ‘apparent suicide attempt’ was similar to the minor gunshot wound Oswald had inflicted on himself in Japan. Each incident seemed to have had the same purpose—to avoid being sent where he did not want to go. The emotion expressed was probably not suicidal despair but extraordinary willfulness—a determination to act decisively and even violently to manipulate events.”483 Davison’s strongest point is Oswald’s apparently saying himself that he inflicted the wound to delay his departure. But one can’t be certain that Oswald said this. Although there is a paragraph of the medical report at the Moscow hospital that quotes Oswald as having said these words, the words had no quotation marks around them and the paragraph prefaces this supposed remark by saying, “According to his statement in the Admission Ward, with the aid of an interpreter…”484

  The evidence that Oswald had, indeed, attempted suicide is substantial. After the alleged remark made at the time of admission, Oswald’s injury is later referred to in the hospital records more than once by the medical staff as a “suicide attempt.”485 Elsewhere, the records said Oswald “tried to cut the blood vessels of his left arm” and “tried to commit suicide in order not to leave for America.”486 One of the psychiatrists who examined Oswald, Dr. Maria Ivanovna Mikhailina, told Frontline in 1993 that “this was a sure suicide attempt.”487 And although one notation in Oswald’s hospital records does refer to the wound as “light without functional disturbance,” the wound (“incised wound of the lower third of the left forearm” by use of a “safety razor blade”) is described in one place as “3 cm. long,” elsewhere as “5 cm. in length” (in other words between 1¼ and 2 inches long), it required “four stitches,” and there was “injury to the blood vessels.” Moreover, Oswald “lost consciousness.”

  As indicated, Oswald was admitted to Botkin Hospital at 4:00 p.m. on October 21, 1959. He was discharged seven days later on October 28. The first three of those days were in the “Psychosomatic Department,” where one psychiatrist (Dr. I. G. Gelershtein) concluded that Oswald’s “mind is clear…No psychotic symptoms were noted. The patient is not dangerous for other people…He has a firm desire to remain in the Soviet Union.” But another psychiatrist who examined Oswald (the aforementioned Dr. Mikhailina) wrote that “he claims he regrets his action. After recovery he plans to return to his homeland.”488

  The Warren Commission, after reference to Oswald’s diary and the medical records, concluded that Oswald’s inflicted wrist slashing was “an apparent suicide attempt.”489 If Oswald had attempted suicide in Russia, as appears to be the case, and if, as so many conspiracy theorists allege, Oswald went to Russia as a CIA agent, then, as anti-conspiracy theorist Mel Ayton asks, “why did he attempt suicide in Moscow?”490

  Oswald’s diary entries during this period are interesting. During his first day, October 21, at Botkin, he writes, “Poor Rimmea stays by my side as interrpator (my Russian is still very bad) far into the night, I tell her ‘go home’ (my mood is bad) but she stays, she is ‘my friend’ She has a strong will.” He adds that “only at this moment I notice she is preety.” His entry for October 22 reads, “Hospital I am in a small room with about 12 others (sick persons.) 2 ordalies and a nurse the room is very drab as well as the breakfast. Only after prolonged (2 hours) observation of the other pat. do I relize I am in the Insanity ward. This relization disquits [disgusts? disquiets?] me.”491

  As seen, Rimma did not abandon him. She visited him faithfully over the next days, partly to scold him for his foolishness, partly to help get him transferred to an ordinary ward, partly to interview him for the KGB. She also began to develop a sisterly affection for him, and started calling him “Alik”—the Russian nickname for Alexei that he started using for himself throughout his stay in the Soviet Union—since the name Lee didn’t sound Russian at all.492

  After his three-day stint in the psychiatric ward, Oswald found the hospital more pleasant. The new ward, which he shared with eleven other patients, was, he wrote, “Airy, good food.” He noted in his diary, “Afternoon. I am visited by Roza Agafonova of the hotel, tourist office who askes about my health, very beautiful, excelant Eng., very merry and kind, she makes me very glad to be alive.”493

  When he was released from Botkin on October 28, Oswald was driven back to the Hotel Berlin in what appeared to be an Intourist car. His doctor thinks not. Dr. Mikhailina told PBS’s Frontline in 1993 that he was taken away by the KGB. She says that she received a c
all from the KGB just before he was to be discharged, asking her to keep him there until they arrived. “Sometime later,” she said, “about forty minutes, a large black car arrived and three young men came in. They confiscated his medical history, his discharge paper, and all his documents, and then they told me they were taking him away.”494

  Frontline asked Vladimir Semichastny, the then chairman of the KGB, about this, and although the KGB had never previously acknowledged any direct contact with Oswald, he admitted that “there were conversations, but this [what Oswald told them] was such outdated information, the kind we say the sparrows have already chirped to the entire world, and now Oswald tells us about it. Not the kind of information that would interest such a high-level organization like ours.” The KGB did, however, consider recruiting Oswald as a spy. “Counterintelligence and intelligence—they both looked him over to see what he was capable of, but unfortunately, neither could find any ability at all,” Semichastny said.495

  If Semichastny was telling the truth and if his memory of what happened thirty years earlier was accurate, what we don’t know is whether Oswald was aware, in these “conversations,” that he was speaking to the KGB. His Historic Diary has no mention of any such conversations, nor even a reference to any discussion with those who removed him from the hospital.